PSX Extreme

Site Stats

Birds Of Steel Takes Flight Early 2012

While we're all looking forward to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon this year, flight fans often complain about a lack of titles.

Therefore, they should be excited to learn about Gaijin Entertainment's new project, set to be published by Konami:

It's Birds of Steel, a new World War II flight simulator for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, set to launch some time in early 2012. The game will boast many of the crucial WWII battles, including Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, the Mediterranean Maltese island, and even Pearl Harbor. Players will have the freedom to select how detailed they would like each campaign to be, and will have "a wealth of single and multiplayer campaigns."

Featuring 20+ missions and over 100 planes (yeah, 100), this one will give players great physics, as each plane has been "faithfully recreated in terms of handling, capabilities and weaponry." Plus, we can expect weather effects, distinct camera views, and a number of different control systems, "ranging from simplistic arcade-style movements to entirely faithful control systems that offer total control over every aspect of flight." Then there's the online support, which includes co-op missions, massive multiplayer online dogfights, and a bunch of different modes.

Said Martin Schneider, Konami Digital Entertainment General Manager:

"For far too long, first-person shooter fans have been tied to the foot soldier point of view, but we aim to bring the seat-of-their-pants skill and daring of dogfighting and aerial combat to a wider audience. Birds of Steel pushes the throttle of realism by giving fans what they’ve been missing when it comes to co-operative online gameplay, incredibly realistic visuals and game dynamics, while spanning the entirety of the war’s air campaigns."

If you're wondering about the developer, their last effort - Apache: Air Assault - was quite solid. These guys have what it takes to create a quality flight experience.

Because you have lame friends ;) JK Never been a flying simulator enthusiast myself, get a GT esque franchise and I'll see what I can muster out of my gaming time for it. I never really thought there was a market for a military flying game.

This is awesome news :). Gaijin made IL-2:Birds of Prey (also for PS3, based on a reworked IL-2:1946 engine from the PC game - on sim mode, the handling is pretty much identical, other than a reduction in torque when you take off - but on arcade mode it's plenty gentle for all the arcade fans out there :)) as well, so this won't be their first effort - and their first effort was pretty damn good (it was a flight game ported from console to PC, and was pretty successful on PC - that's how good it was (Wings of Prey on PC)).

These guys know their physics, and they know their flight combat, and this'll be a second-generation flight game engine for PS3 (and 360). This looks uber-uber-uber awesome :D.